Heinz Von Research Articles

How disunity matters to the history of cybernetics in the human sciences in the United States, 1940–80

Rather than assume a unitary cybernetics, I ask how its disunity mattered to the history of the human sciences in the United States from about 1940 to 1980. I compare the work of four prominent social scientists – Herbert Simon, George Miller, Karl Deutsch, and Talcott Parsons – who created cybernetic models in psychology, economics, political science, and sociology with the work of anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and relate their interpretations of cybernetics to those of such well-known cyberneticians as Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, W. Ross Ashby, and Heinz von Foerster. I argue that viewing cybernetics through the lens of disunity – asking what was at stake in choosing a specific cybernetic model – shows the complexity of the relationship between first-order cybernetics and the postwar human sciences, and helps us rethink the history of second-order cybernetics.

Cinema's Expansion into the Noosphere

Cinema's Expansion into the Noosphere Caroline A. Jones (bio) Expanded Cinema Gene Youngblood Fordham University Press www.fordhampress.com/9780823287413/expanded-cinema/ 464 Pages; Print, $34.95 Lovingly re-issued (complete with its original 1970 errata), Gene Youngblood's prophetic sacrament of videotronics is as fresh as ever. Expanded Cinema now comes with an introductory mini-memoir by the aptly-named Youngblood (still young-blooded-and-eugened at age 78), showing photographs of the author's shift in habitus from 1967's buttoned-down, clean-shaven reporter to an open-collared, curly-haired, mustachioed 1970's counter-cultural intellectual. The revolution he joined is still vexing theory today, as systems thinking confronts the violence of differences eradicated through black-box thinking, baked-in algorithmic bias, and false universals. Can systems be saved for Youngblood's own progressive politics? As a historian, I would argue that this urgent question can only be answered if we return to Youngblood's '60s moment of cybernetics to sit with its troubles, revisiting the politics of his manifesto, published in the inaugural number of Radical Software: The Alternate Television Movement (Spring 1970—the graphic is reproduced in his "Introduction" to Expanded Cinema). Here he aspired to "wrench the intermedia network free" from commerce and ownership, but we will need to reckon with his praise for technoanarchy as the presumptive locus for those who will "assume conscious control over the videosphere" in order to place the media "in the service of all humanity." Scholars of Youngblood must hold in mind (as he does) the derivation of cybernetics from the C3 military-industrial complex and systems from bio-management. And as we celebrate, with the author's help, the galvanizing impact of these ideas on the art world, we still need to hold these tools responsible for instrumentalizing racist urban planning and for generating revenue by robotically boosting reactionary political speech. (C3 references the "command, control, communication" imperative at the heart of early cybernetic theory. For a crystallizing take, see Donna Haraway's classic and multiply-anthologized "Cyborg Manifesto," 1984. For a critique of homophily algorithms as biased by segregation models in urban systems science, readers may wish to track down the 2019 work of Wendy Hui Kyong Chun et al., "Homophily: The Urban History of an Algorithm," published in the journal eflux, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/are-friends-electric/289193/homophily-the-urban-history-of-an-algorithm/) None of the fantastic artists Youngblood celebrates would recognize the future we now inhabit, in which holography has shrunk to an icon on a credit card, and cell-phone charge-coupling devices are algorithmically loaded to recognize the white-skinned human face. Youngblood knew it was possible that things could go wrong, tempering his utopianism by declaring not neo-but "Paleo-cybernetics." Rhetorically, he was insisting that nothing but primitive tool-use had been achieved. We were hominids grasping the crude implements of an unprecedented revolution, troglodytes of a potential shimmering future we had to evolve to achieve. Make no mistake: expanded cinema "actually mean[s] expanded consciousness" as the electrons arranged for human image-making beamed out and jounced with the electrons streaming from newly discovered pulsars and quasars in the distant reaches of space, one as output and the other as input, both crossing inside the read-write innards of our Turing machines. Hanging with Bucky Fuller (who wrote the original introduction), and cybernetic theorists such as Heinz von Foerster and Humberto Maturana, Youngblood's new introduction situates Expanded Cinema in the heady West Coast context of the late '60s, in which scientists and counter-culture gurus alike had "brain[s] full of mescaline and logarithms" as they probed the mysteries of consciousness with increasingly sensitive machines and non-Western philosophies. With this new edition, Expanded Cinema's cultural location within "left" cybernetics is much clearer than when New York publisher Dutton printed that original cover, criss-crossed by video raster lines in an abstract play of color that slowly revealed itself as the phosphor tracings of a bird and a human (from Scott Bartlett's 1967 videotronic film Offon). Part of the use-value of Youngblood's compendium is its technological...

Self-Aware Science Creation

Self-Aware Science Creation John Bentley (bio) New Horizons for Second-order Cybernetics Alexander Riegler, Karl H. Müller, and Stuart A. Umpleby, eds. World Scientific www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/10605 404 Pages; Cloth, $168.00 "Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained." —Saint Augustine "Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer." —Heinz von Foerster New Horizons for Second-Order Cybernetics is a collection of essays from an eclectic set of thinkers. Many of these essays comment directly on other parts of the text as often as they comment more generally on the state of the field of second-order cybernetics (SOC). In part II, Ronald R. Kline points out that proponents of a new science "often write histories of their field in order to do what sociologists call 'boundary work,'" a reference to part I. Kline is correct to suggest that this is a substantial function of the text. However, the editors and framers of the book have architected it in such a way as to go beyond a simple top-down dictation of a history of SOC. The editors employ a recursive approach, beginning with a prompt (or framing notion) and iterating outward, from commentaries on the prompt to commentaries on those commentaries, in an escalating cycle of reconsideration. At the high end of this recursion the work invites the reader to participate in the ongoing communal processing of the meaning of the SOC revolution. Relatedly, this recursive architecture allows the text to demonstrate and perform on itself the meta-leap to endo-mode science that some contributors describe as characteristic of SOC. The text consists of two prologue chapters, a part I, a part II, and one epilogue chapter. Part I consists of a series of target articles about the theory of SOC, such as Louis H. Kauffman's formalization of eigenforms, and the practice, such as Ben Sweeting's exploration of the mutual interaction between SOC and design. Each target article is followed by several commentaries on the piece from other second-order cybernetic thinkers and a closing response to the commentaries by the target article's author. The second prologue chapter sets the stage for the exercise of part I and offers a categorization of and reflection on the ideas presented by the authors of part I. The second prologue chapter and all of Part I are noted to have been published previously in 2016 in the journal Constructivist Foundations volume 11, number 3. Part II consists of reflections from another set of thinkers on the contents and conclusions from the originally published set. The first prologue chapter and the epilogue integrate the critiques of part II. A similar process of soliciting and then synthesizing experiences is used to create each level of the text described above. This process is a function that takes a base idea (prompt) and returns a more refined set of ideas. The function is applied to some unknown prompt (probably generated from many recursive applications of the function to an even more primal prompt idea, at least in an informal way) to generate the target articles of part 1. The same function is then applied to each of the target articles, generating the response commentaries. Together these function applications produce part I and the second prologue chapter, which constitute an organized, if rough, overview of the state of the field of SOC. The function is then applied once more, taking this overview as a prompt to produce the more refined and self-aware picture of SOC that is the entire text. The editors have highlighted this generative function by structuring the text around the prompt and response method, so recursion both generates and structures the text. This structure fits very nicely with Kauffman's focus on eigenforms, thought objects that remain consistent as the domain around them evolves by acting upon itself. Michael R. Lissack elegantly connects eigenform and "distinction" via the idea of stability. Eigenforms provide the stability required to make general distinctions, posit a theory or tell a story in a complex, evolving, self-acting environment. Scientific theories are...

Franz Liszt: Sprache und Theatralität des Virtuosen / Franz Liszt: Langage et mise en scène de la virtuosité ed. by Thomas Betzwieser and Sarah Mauksch

Reviewed by: Franz Liszt: Sprache und Theatralität des Virtuosen / Franz Liszt: Langage et mise en scène de la virtuosité ed. by Thomas Betzwieser and Sarah Mauksch Vincent Kling Thomas Betzwieser and Sarah Mauksch, eds., with the collaboration of Markus Schneider, Franz Liszt: Sprache und Theatralität des Virtuosen / Franz Liszt: Langage et mise en scène de la virtuosité. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2019. 200 pp. The right lens can often bring dim realities into sharp focus, as this volume of studies on Franz Liszt clearly attests. Until fairly recently, the label of "virtuoso" largely consigned him to the status of circus performer or showbiz phenomenon purveying trash with flash on a staggering technical level to advance his cult of personality. Thanks to the emergence of media studies, though, the phenomenon of virtuosity has yielded important new insights into composition and performance in the last century and a half. In their title, the editors candidly link theatricality to the virtuosic, and while they do not argue that there's no such thing as bad publicity, their lively, fascinating collection reveals the extent to which media superstardom (think Liszt's contemporaries Paganini and Lord Byron) is not incompatible with artistic legitimacy. Heinz von Loesch poses the question as to why Alfred Brendel or Martha Argerich, Clara Schumann or Johann Nepomuk Hummel are not called virtuosi while Liszt and others are. That question leads to his fourfold definition of the term (13–16), starting with the simple designation of the "virtuoso" as the professional performer, not the composer, and expanding to include technical mastery aimed at brilliance ("Pomp, Macht-und Klangfülle, Akkord-und Oktaventechnik," 15), and, at its highest, a "Phänomen der Selbstdarstellung […] eine Haltung, bei der der ausübende Musiker nicht eine Funktion des 'Werkes' ist, sondern umgekehrt das Werk die Funktion der Selbstdarstellung" (15). It is this latter aspect that has made Liszt in particular [End Page 79] seem so cheesy, a view that Loesch's reproductions of hilarious caricatures by Wilhelm Busch (19, 21) only bolsters. As to caricatures, it seems impossible to this reviewer that anyone could read Cécile Raynaud's article "Les premières caricatures de Liszt parues dans la presse et la littérature satiriques en France" with its many illustrations (149–66) without laughing out loud. The flying hair, the hieratic poses, the erotic posturing, the need for adulation are all captured in an article that offers vital insights into nineteenth-century concepts of art. However maliciously these caricatures may have been meant (though most have too much humorous good will to be nasty), they show from our present perspective that being lampooned is a form of triumph in itself. Reynaud has combed museums, archives, and journals from the time to give a lively picture (literally) of the extent to which Liszt as personality occupied public awareness. The scholar of literature will also be fascinated not only by writers' reactions to the Liszt phenomenon but also by the often reciprocal exercises in virtuosity that some writers evoked in Liszt. Francis Claudon's "Liszt et Hugo: romantisme et virtuosité" (45–54) provides examples of Victor Hugo's astonishing effects in language, citing "Les djinns" from Les orientales and then Les contemplations and Les voix intérieures for their highly effect-laden, masterful, dazzling complexity in rhythm and rhyme. "Mazeppa" from Les orientales (the poem inspired in turn by Lord Byron) is the basis of Liszt's staggering showpiece of the same title, the fourth of the Douze études d'execution transcendentales—that étude was then dedicated to Victor Hugo. One of the subtitles of Michelle Biget-Mainfroy's article "Quelques opinions sur la virtuosité da la fin du XVIIIe siècle aux années 1860" (25–43) suggests that virtuosi could be equated with performing monkeys ("un tour de singe savant?"); her question is validated by the extremes of linguistic excess Alkan indulges in his performance directions (29), for example, while Marie-Hélène Rybicki, in "Comment l'entendez-vous? Stylistique de la critique de la virtuosité, á l'exemple de Paganini et Liszt" (77–92) cites passages from Théophile Gautier and others (that section is subtitled "Fleurs de...

The sociocybernetics of observation and reflexivity

The aim of this article is to show how sociocybernetics can clarify and bring order to two key concepts in the social sciences: ‘observation’ and ‘reflexivity’. The article provides an introduction and conceptual overview of second order cybernetics, placing it in the larger context of cybernetics and systems sciences studies. Since its inception, in cybernetics the role of the observer has been paramount. It is the observer who distinguishes systems of interest. It is the observer who communicates her observations and theoretical interpretations to the wider community of other observers. Critically, as Heinz von Foerster emphasises, with second order cybernetics the observer, since she is herself an observing system, should ‘enter the domain of her own descriptions’. With her second order studies, she is explaining herself to herself. Reflexively, she is obliged to engage in self-observation. The article sets out some of the theoretical and methodological implications of these propositions.

Hack or Die: How Humanity Steers Into Its Post-Digital Future

This article introduces stories as a link between culture and evolution. It elaborates how the decline of interhuman communication leads to a loss of perception, capability for cooperation, and human intelligence and contributes to the current ecocide. It shows how cybernetics hacked the relationship between evolution and machine development, which brought forth the outlines of man’s current digital transformation and future. It suggests that Lucas Pawlik is still working on a possible sustainable future for humanity that Heinz von Foerster tried to initiate.

Finding Cybernetics

At mid-career as a tenured professor of modern literature, I finally found cybernetics. It was a slow-rolling revelation, a protracted unraveling, for it took me quite a while to unwrap cybernetics’ conceptual core from out of the layers of adjacent or covering discourses that had obscured or forgotten their own origins in the fecundity of cybernetic ideas. Heinz von Foerster’s relation to the Whole Earth Catalog and the systems counterculture around CoEvolution Quarterly were instrumental for my subsequent cybernetic development toward the work of Maturana, Varela, and Luhmann on the one hand, and Lovelock and Margulis on the other.

KNOWLEDGE AND ETHICS

The author of the study explains human cognitive processes by referring to the scientific works of Heinz von Foerster, the Socrates of Cybernetics and co-founder of radical constructivism. The default postulate according to which “The environment as we perceive it is our invention” is supported by two experiments. The neurophysiological experiments on which the postulate is based are briefly explained and relevant ethical conclusions are subsequently drawn.

Applying ethics to itself: recursive ethical questioning in architecture and second-order cybernetics

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to put forward a way that ethics may be applied recursively to itself, in the sense that how we speak and reason about ethics is an activity to which ethical considerations and questions apply. Design/methodology/approach The paper is built on parallels between design and cybernetics, integrating elements of ethical discourse in each field. The way that cybernetics and design can each act as their own meta-disciplines, in the design of design and the cybernetics of cybernetics, is used as a pattern for a similarly recursive approach to ethics. This is explored further by drawing parallels between Heinz von Foersters’ criticism of moral codes and concerns about paternalism in designing architecture. Findings Designers incorporate implicit ethical questioning as part of the recursive process through which they design their design activity, moving between conversations that pursue the goals of a project and meta-conversations in which they question which goals to pursue and the methods they employ in doing so. Given parallels between designing architecture and setting out an ethics (both of which put forward ways in which others are to live), a similar approach may be taken within ethical discourse, folding ethics within itself as its own meta-discipline. Originality/value The paper provides a framework in which to address ethical considerations within ethical discourse itself. Recursive ethical questioning of this sort offers a way of coping with the incommensurability of values and goals that is commonplace given the fragmented state of contemporary ethics.

The 21st Century Singularity and its Big History Implications: A re-analysis

The idea that in the near future we should expect “the Singularity” has become quite popular recently, primarily thanks to the activities of Google technical director in the field of machine training Raymond Kurzweil and his book The Singularity Is Near (2005). It is shown that the mathematical analysis of the series of events (described by Kurzweil in his famous book), which starts with the emergence of our Galaxy and ends with the decoding of the DNA code, is indeed ideally described by an extremely simple mathematical function (not known to Kurzweil himself) with a singularity in the region of 2029. It is also shown that, a similar time series (beginning with the onset of life on Earth and ending with the information revolution – composed by the Russian physicist Alexander Panov completely independently of Kurzweil) is also practically perfectly described by a mathematical function (very similar to the above and not used by Panov) with a singularity in the region of 2027. It is shown that this function is also extremely similar to the equation discovered in 1960 by Heinz von Foerster and published in his famous article in the journal “Science” – this function almost perfectly describes the dynamics of the world population and is characterized by a mathematical singularity in the region of 2027. All this indicates the existence of sufficiently rigorous global macroevolutionary regularities (describing the evolution of complexity on our planet for a few billion of years), which can be surprisingly accurately described by extremely simple mathematical functions. At the same time it is demonstrated that in the region of the singularity point there is no reason, after Kurzweil, to expect an unprecedented (many orders of magnitude) acceleration of the rates of technological development. There are more grounds for interpreting this point as an indication of an inflection point, after which the pace of global evolution will begin to slow down systematically in the long term.

Zašto naše iskustvo započinje iz sredine? O tri „Meditacije o posredovanom iskustvu“

From a particular point of view that engages in several areas of human knowledge and activity, the paper attempts to trace possible sources of our experience based on signs and their interrelationships, as well as the process of attributing meaning. The main thesis of the paper is that our experience starts from the middle, and as such, it is always mediated, either by signifiers, as suggested by Jacques Derrida’s poststructuralist theory on writing, or by the process of attributing meaning according to Heinz von Foerster’s constructivist approach to the cognitive process, or by means of the signified as an occurrence that is generated in experiments of quantum physics only by the very act of observation, presupposed by the philosophical implications of the quantum theory by Werner Heisenberg.

Niklas Luhmann: 20 anos do sociedade da sociedade. O lugar do ao mesmo tempo na teoria do direito

Pautada primordialmente por ideias da reflexividade cibernetica (com a teoria da informacao de Shannon e Weaver, a logica bivalente de Gotthard Gunther, a teoria dos sistemas que observam de Heinz von Foerster, a teoria da forma de dois lados de George Spencer Brown e a teoria da evolucao da autopoiesis de Maturana e Varela), Niklas Luhmann desenvolveu sua teoria da sociedade em uma obra composta por onze livros, sendo “Sistemas sociais” o livro introdutorio, publicado em 1984, e o livro “Sociedade da sociedade”, publicado em 2007, a parte “final” da obra. Com o objetivo de homenagear o autor devido a aplicacao de sua teoria para pensar a America Latina, descrevemos os efeitos da teoria social luhmanniana sobre temas como: ciencia juridica, norma juridica, validade do direito e hermeneutica juridica (decisao juridica). Para isso, exploramos a literatura primaria e dos seus criticos, bem como coletamos autores latino-americanos que partem dessa teoria, para isso, lancamos os termos “Luhmann” + o nome de cada um dos vinte paises da America Latina.Palavras-chave: teoria dos sistemas, Niklas Luhmann, sociedade da sociedade.

Changing Paradigms: From Schooling to Schools as Adaptive Recommendation Systems

The paper explores a shift in education from educational systems requiring student adaptation to educational recommendation systems adapting to students' individual needs. The paper discusses the concept of adaptation as addressed in educational research and draws on the system theory of Heinz von Foerster to shed light on how the educational system has used and understood adaptation. In this context, we point out two different approaches to educational adaptation: 1) students adapting to the educational system and 2) the attempt of the educational system to adapt to students through automatized system adaptation and recommendation systems. These different understandings constitute a design framework that is used to analyze two current trends: Adaptive learning systems and learning analytics. Finally, the paper discusses the potential of looking at adaptation as recommendation systems by presenting a case, which is methodologically inspired by Design-Based Research, in the form of a special type of adaptive MOOC, the so-called adaptive SPOC (Small Private Online Course).

Becoming through Belonging: The Spiritual Dimension in Psychotherapy

In this article, I reflect on what spirituality can mean and I propose to add a spiritual stance as a dimension to the psychotherapy domain. It is the professional's choice to address this dimension or not, but more and more clients at the encounter are asking if the clinician is walking a spiritual path. I then suggest some processes that might enhance this dimension and that may introduce a respectful stance. We have been taught that systemic psychotherapy should be process‐focused, evolving, and ethical. I assume the ethical proposal of my mentor Heinz von Foerster: ‘Act always in order to enhance the number of your and other people's choices.’

ПОЛИТИКА, ЭКОНОМИКА, ПРИРОДОПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ: КУДА «ТЕОРИИ» ВЕДУТ И ЧТО НАМ ПРЕДЛАГАЮТ?

The article describes «theories» of social development in the aspect of politics, economics and nature management. The social and futuristic theories of Thomas Malthus, Heinz von Förster, Francis Fukuyama, Sergei Kapitza, Andrei Parshev, Vitaly Bushuev, Yuri Mukhin, Mikhail Veller, Pierre Trier de Chardin, Nikita Moiseev, Yury Kosygin, Yuri Salin and other researchers are relevant. So far, there are no theories that correctly assess all the important aspects of human life and lead humanity quite safe roads, albeit different. In the opinion of the author, this «roads» have to begin with the «indexes» of Carl Schmitt, who argued that humane social aspirations of mankind should be provided with regular legal protection in case of hostile confrontations between peoples and countries inevitable in the course of human development. It is necessary to return to the legal foundations of the old Euro-centrist world, which the Vienna Congress attempted to restore in 1815.

On Selves and I's A Lecture Apropos of Douglas Hofstadter's 'I Am a Strange Loop'

How does a “self” come into being and in what ways does that relate to the concept of “strange loop”, as developed in Douglas Hofstadter’s I am a strange loop? To put the point in perhaps more properly Hofstadterian terms: how is it that self-reflecting beings come out of inanimate matter? How can a self come out of things (carbon, molecules, atoms, proteins and so on) “as selfless as a stone or a puddle”? How does all that “meaningless” stuff that makes us up in the physical universe, grow into an entity that can refer “meaningfully” to itself, perceive itself, talk about itself, become “self-aware”? The aim of this lecture is to provide an insight into Hofstadter’s core idea, by recostructing a general introduction to a philosophy of the so-called “consciousness”, with a little help from some key figures in the development of western rationality: Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gotthard Gunther, Heinz von Foerster and, finally, two leading figures in the domain of neuro-phenomenology, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Lecture (13.000 words) delivered on Tuesday 17th March 2015, before an audience of faculty members and digital arts & design undergraduate and postgraduate students of the Athens School of Fine Arts (Athens-Greece) and OCAD University (Toronto-Canada), as part of the “Future of Storytelling and Open Worlds Masterclass”, organized by the Digital Futures Program of the OCADU in collaboration with ASFA. The Masterclass was held at ASFA’s annex in Hydra, Greece (15th-20th March 2015).

When Newton meets Heinz Von Foerster, complexity vanishes and simplicity reveals

Purpose – Complexity is the real beast that baffles everybody. Though there are increasing inter-disciplinary discussions on it, yet it is scantly explored. The purpose of this paper is to bring a new and unique dimension to the discourse assimilating the important ideas of two towering scientists of their time, Newton and Heinz von Foerster. In the tradition of Foersterian second-order cybernetics the paper attempts to build a bridge from a cause-effect thinking to a thinking oriented towards “understanding understanding” and in the process presents a model of “Cybernetics of Simplification” indicating a path to simplicity from complexity. Design/methodology/approach – The design of research in the paper is exploratory and the paper takes a multidisciplinary approach. The model presented in the paper builds on analytics and systemics at the same time. Findings – Simplicity can be seen in complex systems or situations if one can construct the reality (be that the current one that is being experienced or p...

Non-trivial philosophy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to recuperate Heinz von Foerster’s “Quantum Mechanical Theory of Memory” from Cybernetics: Circular, Causal, and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems and John von Neumann’s The Computer and the Brain for present-day, and future, applications in biophysics, theories of information and cognition, and quantum theories; the main objective is to ground cybernetic theory for a critical evaluation of the historical evolution of the Monte Carlo method, with potential for application to quantum computing. Design/methodology/approach – Close-reading of selected texts, historiography, and case studies in current developments in the Monte Carlo method of high-energy particle physics (HEP) for developing a platform for bridging the apparently incommensurable differences between the physical-mathematical and the biological sciences. Findings – First, usefulness of the cybernetic approach for historicizing the Monte Carlo method in relation to digital computing and ...

A cybernetic view on learning curves and energy policy

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that cybernetic theory explains learning curves and sets the curves as legitimate and efficient tools for a pro-active energy technology policy.Design/methodology/approach– The learning system is a non-trivial machine that is kept in non-equilibrium steady state at minimum entropy production by competitive, equilibrium markets. The system has operational closure and the learning curve expresses its eigenbehaviour. This eigenbehaviour is analysed not in calendar time but in the characteristic time of the system, i.e., its eigentime. Measured in eigentime, the minimum entropy production in the steady-state learning system is constant. The double closure mechanism described by Heinz von Förster makes it possible for the learning system to change (adapt) its eigenbehaviour without compromising its operational closure.Findings– By obeying basic laws of second order cybernetics and of non-equilibrium thermodynamics the learning system self-organises its learning to follow an optimal path described by the learning curve. The learning rates are obtained through an operator formalism and the results explain observed distributions. Application to solar cell (photo-voltaic) modules indicates that the silicon scarcity bubble 2005-2008 produced excess entropy corresponding to costs of the order of 100 billion US dollars.Research limitations/implications– Grounding technology learning and learning curves in cybernetics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics open up new possibilities to understand technology shifts through radical innovations or paradigm changes.Practical implications– Learning curves are legitimate and efficient tools for energy policy and industrial strategy.Originality/value– Grounding of technology learning and learning curves in cybernetic and thermodynamic theory provides a stable theoretical basis for applications in industry and policy.

Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75 Geburtstag ed. by Mati Laur, Enn Küng, und Stig Örjan Ohlsson (review)

Reviewed by: Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75 Geburtstaged. by Mati Laur, Enn Küng, und Stig Örjan Ohlsson Francesco La Rocca (bio) Mati Laur, Enn Küng, und Stig Örjan Ohlsson (Hgs.). Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75. Geburtstag. Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2005. 564 S. ISBN: 9949-13-208-8. Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte. 2007. Bd. 2 / Hg. von Mati Laur und Karsten Brüggemann. 309 S. ISSN: 1736-4132. Helmut Piirimäe is professor emeritus at the University of Tartu and one of the most respected researchers of the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century relationships between Sweden and Estonia. His work has enjoyed a most positive reception both in Estonia and in Sweden, to the point that in 1998 he was chosen to accompany then-president Lennart Meri during his official visit to Stockholm in his capacity as expert in Swedish–Estonian relationships. To mark the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, in 2005 he received a Festschrift edited by his fellow professors at the University of Tartu, Mati Laur and Enn Küng, in cooperation with Stig Örjan Ohlsson, titled Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75. Geburtstag. The volume, containing twenty-three contributions plus a bibliography of Piirimäe’s works, pays tribute to the Estonian scholar by expanding on various aspects of his mayor research topic, namely, the interaction between Nordic and Baltic lands in the Modern Age. The first chapter serves as the introduction without actually being labeled as such, as it consists of personal memories of Piirimäe by Ohlsson. The Swedish scholar first met him in 1994 upon his arrival in Tartu as a lecturer of Swedish. The chapter is basically a collection of anecdotes that flesh out Piirimäe’s personality and the relevance of his activity in the life of his university. The chapter’s title, “Den förste estniske bonden som har sovit i kungliga slotten i Stockholm,” comes from the above-mentioned 1998 Estonian presidential visit to Sweden. On that occasion, Piirimäe proudly claimed to have been the first Estonian farmer to have spent a night in the royal castle in Stockholm, thus stressing his attachment to his peasant roots and his people, as well as a good degree of self-irony. The next chapter may come as a surprise to the reader, for it has nothing to do with Baltic or Swedish history, but is instead a reflection on the idea of the mask in ancient Mesopotamian cultures. Its author, Thomas Richard Kämmerer, attempts to apply the idea of the mask, here understood as an inner dissociation, to textual representation of gods and heroes, claiming that ritual invocations [End Page 455]were actually playing the same role played by a mask, for through the masked language (“maskierte Sprache”) the priest was able to act as a divine stand-in. Ancient Mesopotamian culture is well beyond the reviewer’s competence, and it also has no connection whatsoever with the book’s main topic. Despite being a quite interesting reading per se (although the correlation between actual masks and ritual language is far from convincingly argued by Kämmerer), I fail to see the point of including such a contribution in a Festschrift titled Die baltischen Länder und der Norden. The following chapter, “Die baltischen Länder im europäischen Kraftfeld,” is an overall narrative of the geopolitical history of Estonia and Latvia from the Viking Age to the end of the Soviet rule. It was written by the Heinz von zur Mühlen, who passed away in the same year of this Festschrift’s publication (2005). His contribution does not offer any new arguments or sources, but it nonetheless provides an effective recap of a thousand years of Baltic political and military history. Ivar Leimus introduces the very first actual research paper of the book. His “Einige Beiträge zur Münzgeschichte Livlands am Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts” expands on the discovery of medieval coins near Tallinn in 2004. Leimus accurately describes the coins and compares them...